Chapter 36 – Sun in the East, Rain in the West
“That sounds like some kind of reunion between old friends,” Chou Bodeng’s pristine fingertips tapped lightly on the stone platform. “But it’s not impossible that you’re some kind of charlatan. After all, a hero with amnesia mistaking an enemy for a close friend is a timeless trope in plays.”
“Why do you still love watching plays so much?” The man in white wasn’t angry. He smiled, which diluted the imperial, king-like nobility about him. “You don’t remember anything, yet you still remember the plots of thousands of plays? If I had known, I would have brought you a box of silver paste and red grease and just let you play all the good and bad roles on stage yourself.”
“Indeed.”
Chou Bodeng pushed off the stone platform and jumped down from the Circular Altar.
His sleeves spread like a crane’s wings as he fell towards the surface of the pool, but he didn’t sink into the water. He landed on an azure porcelain dish, facing the man in white from across the shimmering water and candlelight.
“Aren’t you going to state your name?”
“My name…” The man in white glanced at the lamps in the silver lake. “My surname is Huai. My name is Ningjun.”
“Huai Ningjun, that’s a poorly fabricated fake name.” Chou Bodeng walked across the surface of the lake, stepping on one azure dish after another, the hem of his clothes brushing past the flames without being singed. “Although I can’t remember for the time being, I have a feeling that even if I knew you in the past, we were definitely the ‘not even half a sentence is worth saying if we don’t get along’ type. So…”
He raised his eyes, his gaze cold and sharp.
“If you have something to say, say it straight.”
“If you have a grudge, draw your blade.”
The shadows cast by the azure porcelain dishes at the bottom of the lake moved slowly with the water’s ripples, hiding countless crises that could change in an instant. Chou Bodeng’s words seemed to make the lurking murderous intent suddenly tense up. The distance between him and the man in white was already very close, the perfect distance for drawing swords and fighting to the death.
Huai Ningjun shook his head.
“You’re overthinking it,” Huai Ningjun said. “I just came to invite you to watch a play.”
“What play?”
“Sunrise in the east, rain in the west.”
***
Rain.
A rain that chilled to the bone.
“Damn it.” Lu Jing shivered violently, his hand gripping his saber trembling slightly. “You damn bald donkey, are you trying to freeze us to death?”
Monk Budu frowned and made a hushing gesture. “Benefactors, please don’t speak so loudly. We haven’t left the formation.”
“Haven’t left the formation…”
Zuo Yuesheng frowned, looking around. They were standing on a somewhat familiar street. The rooftops and archways were shrouded in a fine, misty rain. Although the undulating, slanted lines still looked very gloomy and bleak, it was no longer the flat gray from before. The surrounding scene looked more like the real Ru City—Ru City before the Red Ru had awakened.
A slight shiver ran through Zuo Yuesheng’s heart.
This was the first time he had personally witnessed Ru City when the Red Ru were dormant. It wasn’t just not magnificent or glorious; it was as desolate and dreary as a ghost city.
Monk Budu said they hadn’t left the formation, so where was this?
Monk Budu sighed and held up his much dimmer Buddhist beads for everyone to see. “This string of beads was a gift from the Buddha himself. I had originally intended to use it to forcefully break the illusion array and bring you all back to Ru City to prove my innocence. I never expected the beads to instead bring us into City Diviner Zhou’s ‘Lost Ferry’.”
“Zhou…” Lou Jiang paused. “Whose ‘Lost Ferry’? What does that mean?”
“Aigh! A Lost Ferry is like a ‘heart-devil’ or a ‘heart-obstruction.’ The names are different, but the meaning is more or less the same.” Monk Budu sighed with a mournful face. “This matter is all the fault of those old geezers in our Buddhist Sect. All day long, they talk about ferrying all living beings across, ferrying all living beings across. They make a magical artifact and all it can think about is saving the world and its people, without distinguishing between friend and foe.”
It turned out that Monk Budu’s string of Buddhist beads was also known as the “Ferry Across the Lost Ferry.”
A person who had entered an illusion array, their mind confused by the illusion, counted as being in a “Lost Ferry,” which was why Monk Budu thought he could use the beads’ “Ferry Across the Lost Ferry” divine ability to get out. But he had never imagined that this illusion array was controlled by spiritual sense. Besides the minds of those who entered the array, the mind of the array’s creator was also connected to it… Since Zhou Ziyan could be so ungrateful as to kill his master, he must have already lost his own heart long ago.
“With my cultivation, it seems I am temporarily unable to drive the Buddhist beads to directly ferry City Diviner Zhou across, so it simply brought us into his memories instead…” Monk Budu spread his hands helplessly. “The meaning is probably that it wants us to find a way to lead City Diviner Zhou out of his Lost Ferry.”
“For god’s sake,” Zuo Yuesheng’s mouth twitched. “Isn’t that just asking for trouble? This kid wants to kill us, and your damn beads expect us to reform him? What are we supposed to reform him with? Even if we took a razor and shaved his head, it’s not like he’d suddenly attain enlightenment on the spot!”
“Hush.”
Lou Jiang made a hand signal, his eyes fixed on the other end of the street.
“He’s here.”
Sure enough, Zhou Ziyan was walking over, leading a child by the hand. The group instinctively wanted to hide, but the distance between them was very close, and there was nothing on either side of the street to hide behind. In their haste, Zhou Ziyan walked right up to them.
Startled, they all put their hands on their sabers and swords.
“We’re almost home. You can’t argue with your mother anymore.”
“But, I want to be an Oracle Maiden.” The little girl rubbed her eyes. “Ziyan, Ziyan, can you talk to my mother for me? You’re an Oracle Master now, so if you talk to her, she’ll agree.”
“Well…”
The big one and the little one slowly walked away down the street.
Zuo Yuesheng slowly released his saber and exchanged a look with Lu Jing.
The Zhou Ziyan in the Lost Ferry was younger than the one they had met. He was still just an Oracle Master, and his way of coaxing children was far from the practiced ease they had seen… To be honest, they didn’t have much of a relationship with Zhou Ziyan. When they were ambushed, their mood was more one of “damn you, how dare you make a move on me” anger. They had even thought that this Zhou fellow might be another bastard like the former city master of Fu City.
But this Bastard Zhou seemed a little different from Bastard Ge.
While Zuo Yuesheng and Lu Jing were still conflicted, Lou Jiang had already passed the others and followed after them.
Zuo Yuesheng slapped his thigh.
Damn, how could he forget? They had someone here who seemed to have been a fanboy of Bastard Zhou! It had all happened so suddenly that everyone had forgotten this point. Thinking back now, on Pan Street in the illusion array, the ferocity with which Lou Jiang had swung his sword was unprecedented.
“Go, go, go, follow them.”
Zuo Yuesheng waved his hand and tailed them.
As the group was about to round the street corner, Zhou Ziyan, who was walking ahead, suddenly stopped and lowered his head to the little girl. “You wait here for a moment and don’t run off. I’ll go and talk to your mother first.”
The little girl obediently stood still.
Zhou Ziyan patted her head and walked forward.
Lou Jiang was closest to him. At first, he thought he had discovered something and subconsciously tightened his grip on his sword hilt. But soon, Lou Jiang noticed something was wrong. Zhou Ziyan rounded the street corner by himself, stood silently under a roof eave, lowered his eyes, and quietly listened to the conversation coming from the courtyard.
“…later than last year again.”
“The sun isn’t coming out and the rain is getting lighter. What are we going to do if this continues?”
“…”
Lou Jiang understood.
Zhou Ziyan hadn’t discovered them; he had heard the conversation in the courtyard, so he had the child wait at the street corner. Lou Jiang just didn’t understand what these conversations had to do with Zhou Ziyan’s Lost Ferry.
Just as he was thinking, the conversation in the courtyard gradually became more intense.
“He’s dragging us all down by himself. We never should have…”
“What nonsense are you spouting!” a man interrupted roughly. “What does a woman like you know!”
“I’m a woman, I don’t understand the grand principles you all talk about,” the woman said fiercely. “Then you tell me, what has he done? He himself doesn’t have to worry about food or drink, the Mountain Sea Pavilion gives him whatever he wants. But what about our Ru City? What’s going to happen to our Ru City?”
“Didn’t he come back?”
“Come back? What’s the use of coming back,” the woman sneered. “Being an Oracle Master is nothing. When the city dies, he can still go back to being the number one genius of the Mountain Sea Pavilion. How many years will that set him back? He gets a good reputation and a great future. What a profitable deal.”
“…”
Lou Jiang turned to look at Zhou Ziyan.
Zhou Ziyan stood there, pale. After the argument ended, he waited a little while, then raised his hand to rub his face, and walked up as if nothing had happened, knocking on the door.
“Who is it?”
“Auntie Yang, it’s me,” Zhou Ziyan replied gently.
It sounded like something was knocked over in the courtyard. Hurried footsteps approached, and the door creaked open to reveal the flustered face of a woman. “Ah, Ziyan, it’s you. Come in, come in… Old man, go get some dates!”
“There’s no need,” Zhou Ziyan said with a normal expression, looking slightly apologetic. “I just ran into Doudou. She said she was afraid you’d scold her, so she didn’t dare to come back.”
“That damn girl,” the woman said, apologizing while ushering him inside.
The rest of the conversation gradually faded.
Lou Jiang took a few steps back and bumped into someone.
Zuo Yuesheng, Lu Jing, and Ye Cang stood behind him with furrowed brows, having clearly heard the argument as well.
“Benefactors, the sun used to shine in Ru City too.”
Monk Budu said faintly, fingering his Buddhist beads.
***
The city gates opened.
Sunlight spread out along the ground, in an instant covering thousands of acres of paddy fields. The green rice shoots grew taller in the golden light. Women with headscarves and bamboo baskets walked along the parallel ridges of the fields, while men carrying hoes and straw loads led water buffalo through the mud. Chou Bodeng stood on a Red Ru fish about ten meters long, carried by the swift river current, passing under the half-moon-shaped city gate.
An old man beat a gong and drum, his aged voice echoing between heaven and earth.
“The Miasma Moon has passed, yo—”
“The four wilds are open!”
The men and women bent over planting rice seedlings straightened up and responded in loud voices.
“The Divine Ru river opens—”
“Plant the grains!”
Schools of Red Ru fish leaped out of the water, their scales shining brightly.
They flew over the heads of the people working in the fields, sprinkling down strings of brilliant water droplets. The school of fish drew a scarlet rainbow in the sky outside the city, then plunged headfirst into the river channels that separated the paddy fields. They swam along the river, and after a certain distance, they leaped high into the air again.
Wherever they passed, the lingering foul qi from the long Miasma Moon melted away like accumulated snow.
“The scale-fire of the Red Ru comes from sunlight,” Huai Ningjun said, landing lightly beside Chou Bodeng. “Although they are fish that cannot leave the water, they also cannot leave the sun. Without rain, they will die. Without sunlight, they will weaken.”
It was because of their weakness that they needed to hibernate.
Chou Bodeng walked a few steps along the field ridge.
The sun hung high in the east, and the accumulated rain fell in the west. As the years passed, the sun gradually shifted west, and the rain gradually shifted east, like a slowly rotating taiji of rain and sun. Yin and yang merged, forming the unique life cycle of this city. In the places where the sun shone, the Ru fish emerged from the rivers, helping people clear away the foul qi that had accumulated in the thick earth during the entire Miasma Moon. In the places where the rain fell continuously, the Ru fish swam and floated, taking carefully prepared green rice balls and pastries from people’s hands.
The entire city had both rain and light.
It was bustling and lively.
The red of the Red Ru, the green of the mulberry and grain, the gold of the rising sun—a painted scroll of heaven and earth.
“So,” Huai Ningjun waved his sleeve, “do you want to save it?”
***
Rainwater filled the air, and the surrounding scenery changed rapidly.
The courtyard and the arguing couple disappeared. Lou Jiang and the others stood quietly in place, knowing that the Lost Ferry was changing. For a while, they couldn’t see anything else, only hearing a jumble of conversations, sometimes sharp, sometimes whispering, but all very vague.
“Ziyan, Ziyan, someone is returning to the water again.”
“How many times have I told you? You must call me City Diviner. At the very least, you should call me Mister. You have no manners.”
“But everyone calls you Ziyan, Ziyan. Why can they call you that, and I can’t?”
“Well said. All people are equal.”
Hearing the last sentence, Zuo Yuesheng and Lu Jing nearly jumped up.
The first three sentences were a conversation between Zhou Ziyan and someone else, but the voice in the last sentence was clearly Chou Bodeng’s!
Damn it!
Zuo Yuesheng and Lu Jing were so excited they almost shouted, thinking, Young Master Chou, in the end, it really is you who will come to save us with your sword. Fortunately, they were held back by Monk Budu and Lou Jiang, one on each side.
The surroundings finally became clear.
The group looked around and found that the scene presented by the Lost Ferry this time was quite familiar. Wasn’t it the very Circular Altar where they had been tricked into the illusion array?
At the same time, they also saw Chou Bodeng.
Chou Bodeng was in a waterside pavilion not far from the Circular Altar, looking in their direction. His gaze passed straight through them and landed on the altar. It seemed that in the Lost Ferry, neither Zhou Ziyan nor Chou Bodeng could see them.
Zuo Yuesheng still wanted to go over to Chou Bodeng’s side, but Monk Budu tapped him.
Monk Budu pointed at Zhou Ziyan, who was wearing the City Diviner’s robes, and gestured for the others to follow him first.
“Soul, return! The thick earth is lost in miasma; here alone can you rest.”
“Soul, return! The high heavens are boundless; here alone can you rest.”
“…”
The song of the Oracle Masters and Maidens was faint and distant.
Although they knew Zhou Ziyan couldn’t see them, the group inexplicably felt a little guilty. They tiptoed and craned their necks as they followed him to the highest point of the Circular Altar, where they saw him holding a saber and skillfully cutting up a corpse. Among them, Lu Jing had never seen such a scene before and almost wanted to throw up on the spot.
“This guy, could he be some kind of evil demon?”
Lu Jing asked in a whisper.
The kind that eats human corpses.
Lou Jiang jabbed him hard with his elbow, shutting him up. As they spoke, Zhou Ziyan’s saber had already cut open the deceased’s abdomen, and they all saw a piece of gold roll out from under the blade. Zhou Ziyan continued to perform the Returning to Water ritual with no expression, his hand gripping the saber pale and forceful as he carved out the deceased’s heart.
“Amitabha, how virtuous, how virtuous.”
Monk Budu said softly.
“It is as I thought.”
“What… what’s wrong?” Lu Jing asked.
“Suicide by swallowing gold,” Lou Jiang replied, his pupils reflecting the image of thousands of Ru fish submerging the deceased. “He is… feeding himself to the fish.”
The school of fish circled low, hovering. The Red Ru could not speak.
But Lou Jiang heard their song of sorrow.
The youth who said he would lend his sword walked further and further away. The little girl who would never grow up ran into the waterside pavilion, pulling the young City Diviner outside. At first, she spoke cheerfully about The Collection, but then her voice gradually grew quieter.
“Ziyan… so many people are returning to the water this year.”
“Mm.”
“Ziyan, will the Ru fish not fall asleep again after waking up this time?”
“Mm.”
Lu Jing stood there in a daze, watching them walk away.
The woman by the plain window stroked his head and said softly, “Shiyi, you must know that we are often just passersby. We don’t understand the joys, sorrows, and grief of others…” They came to Ru City, saw its misty rain, saw the colors of heaven and earth that burst forth from its gloomy darkness. They exclaimed, they praised.
But did they really understand this city?
No.
They knew nothing. They were just passersby.
“Aigh,” Monk Budu sighed with a mournful face. “This is going to be difficult. It turns out it wasn’t Zhou Ziyan who wanted to kill us, but the entire city.”
Knowing there is no hope in life, knowing there is no fear in death.
The entire city was complicit in the conspiracy.